After receiving negative feedback, Marin County’s Community Development Agency has dropped a proposal to shrink the duties and authority of the county’s three design review boards.

Marin County Planning Manager Jeremy Tejirian, in an email Thursday, wrote: “The previous proposal seemed to cause some concerns, so we do not intend to propose any amendments related to the Design Review Boards.”

Members of the Strawberry Design Review Board, which has played a major role in reviewing development proposals for the former Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary site submitted by North Coast Land Holdings, were particularly chagrined by the proposal.

“It resonated as something that was out of sync with everything else that has been going on in the community,” said Strawberry Design Review Board member Julie Brown. “When you start to muzzle local representatives’ ability to communicate to the county, you muzzle the community.”

Design review boards, which are citizen advisory committees appointed by the Board of Supervisors, hold public meetings where applicants for development projects are invited to present their proposals. While Design Review Boards do not issue binding rulings affecting projects, they do make recommendations to the county on proposals.

The Strawberry Design Review Board reviews projects in the Strawberry area of Mill Valley. The Tamalpais Design Review Board reviews projects in the Tamalpais Valley area of Mill Valley. And the Kentfield Planning Advisory Board reviews projects within the area of Kentfield and Greenbrae covered by the Kentfield/Greenbrae Community Plan, with the exception of the Kent Woodlands neighborhood.

As part of a larger group of development code amendments, planning staff had proposed limiting the design review board’s purview to oversight of their respective community plans.

The development code specifies that the design review board’s duties and authority also include advising the county about project compliance with the countywide plan, other specific plans and the development code.

It also states that design review boards are to make recommendations to the planning agency “regarding the adequacy of an application, the appropriate level of environmental review, and the relative merit of development proposals.”

While striking out this language, the proposed changes also included some new duties: advising the county about compliance of major public works department projects with applicable community plans and advising the county about amendments to the local community plan.

Tejirian said the proposed changes were “intended to better align our development code regulations with existing practice and specific policies in the Tam plan and Kentfield/Greenbrae community plan.”

Tejirian sought response from the design review boards by Jan. 4, and most of it was negative.

Riley Hurd, an attorney who has represented the Seminary Neighborhood Association in legal battles with North Coast Land Holdings over development proposals for the former seminary property, said the changes would effectively “gut” the design review boards.

“These design review board are supposed to be first line of defense for these communities,” Hurd said.

He said that the Strawberry Design Review board had recently used all three of the proposed “strike outs” in its review of North Coast Land Holdings development proposals.

Hurd and others spoke at a Dec. 17 meeting of the Strawberry Design Review Board, during which the proposed changes were discussed. Several members of the public attended the meeting and made comments.

Fran Corcoran, who serves on the Strawberry Tomorrow committee, which was formed in an effort to bridge differences between the community and North Coast Land Holdings, said the timing of the proposal was horrible, according to minutes taken at the meeting.

Corcoran said the Strawberry Design Review Board’s authority is key to ensuring that the developer takes the community seriously.

The minutes record Sylvia Marino as saying, “We need the Strawberry Design Review Board to represent our interests. The county is currently ignoring multiple code violations at the seminary and our complaints go unanswered.”

Other speakers quoted in the minutes included Deirdre McCrohan, who said, “This notice is clearly designed to strip the design review board of all its power. The Strawberry Design Review Board gives Strawberry its voice.”

The Tamalpais Design Review Board has also raised concerns about projects that have proved contentious.

In an April 21, 2016, letter to Brian Crawford, director of Marin County’s Community Development Agency, the Tam Design Review Board expressed concern that a proposed extension of Alta Way could result in the development of nine additional homes in the vicinity. The letter said the project applicants owned 10 parcels along paper streets in the area.

Friends of West Tam Valley, a citizens group, followed up, requesting county documents in late 2016. The group eventually hired a Larkspur lawyer, Edward Yates, in an attempt to get all the documents, and the county was later required to pay Yates $89,935 in legal fees.

Marin Superior Court Judge Paul Haakenson ruled in Yates’ favor in a Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation motion. A SLAPP suit is a lawsuit designed to intimidate and silence critics.

Tamalpais Design Review Board member Alan Jones wrote Tejirian a long email explaining why he thought the proposed changes in the design review board’s duties were ill-founded.

“While on the surface, it makes sense for us to confine our concerns to our Community Plans, in practice there are many situations in which it would severely limit our ability to do our job,” Jones wrote.

Not all the design review board members, however, had concerns about the proposal.

Anne Petersen, a member of the Kentfield Planning Advisory Board, said, “Kentfield Advisory Board didn’t have any concerns about it because it wouldn’t affect how we do business. We’ve been doing business that way with them for more than 30 years.”